HighGrove's Atlanta Commercial Landscaping Blog

To achieve and maintain one of those amazing expanses of lawn your commercial property neighbors are jealous of, you need to take care of it.

This means proper and regular mowing, consistent fertilization, persistent weed control, correct and adequate watering and scouting for any problems, such as insects and drought or traffic stress.

But you also have to make sure the nutrients you’re giving the turf are actually making it to where they need to go, which is the soil beneath your grass.

Enter aeration. Aeration can be an important element for a healthy lawn because the process actually allows air and water to penetrate built-up grass or lawn thatch.

But when is the best time to perform aeration based on your lawn type? This can get a bit tricky. Let’s review the process of aeration, its benefits, why it helps enhance commercial turfgrass and also provide an answer to when should you aerate your lawn.

No Atlanta commercial landscape is completely flat—throughout the entire property. It’s natural that a landscape will bend and curve and rise and dip.

And no one likes to drive down the road and see an out-of-control slope full of mud and slush. The same can be said for one that’s a barren, mulch-speckled incline pitted with chunks of bald spots or turf washouts.

Sure, landscaping a slope isn’t easy. From establishing plants to controlling heavy rains, stormwater runoff can carry away any topsoil not held down by roots. And then during drought, slopes have a tendency to go dry, not giving desirable plants a chance to root, while seeming to give weeds free reign to roam.

It highlights your strengths, like your signage and your entryway, to ensure your customers, tenants and visitors find their way in. It enhances your features and hot spots for more hours than daylight alone provides. And it keeps people on your property safe and secure during their stay.

But with all of the buzz lately about LED landscape lighting, it might make you wonder if you should upgrade and reap the numerous benefits this new technology provides.

After installing countless landscape lighting for commercial properties across Atlanta, we can tell you there are some solid reasons you should consider the switch to LED landscape lighting.

Does your plant material seem to be feeling a bit soggy or stifled lately in this Atlanta heat?

One of the top reasons plant material can suffer on your commercial property is from under or over watering. That’s why we install an irrigation system on your property.

Commercial landscaping brings together a diverse range of plants to create a rich mixture of textures and hues. Each of them has different watering requirements.

An irrigation system can be customized to fit each area of a property so the plants are getting the right amount of water where it’s needed. However, an irrigation system can still have room for error.

Stormwater runoff can be a problem, especially in commercial areas or downtown areas where the removal of tree and ornamental plants, the addition of impervious surfaces and soil compaction impact the movement of water in an environment.

This is why stormwater is listed as one of the leading sources for water pollution. And stormwater issues usually increase with more urbanization and development. For the past two decades, the Environmental Protection Agency says the rate of land development has been twice the rate of population growth.

For that reason, cities continue to implement water quality protection strategies. Different stormwater solutions are used at different scales to provide local waterbodies the greatest degree of protection.

Sure, Atlanta summers can be brutally hot! We’re talking average temperatures in the high 90s and 100s, heat radiating off of concrete and hardscape surfaces. Air conditioning on high. Sweat dripping off of brows the second you walk outside. You get the picture.

But fearing Atlanta’s worst in the summer is no reason to let your commercial landscape become bland and unattractive. You can still have a huge array of summer hues to dress up your property despite the heat.

And we’re not even talking about your most visible areas, like entryways. We’re talking about the hardest to grow areas, like beside hardscapes and in parking lot islands, during the toughest growing conditions of the year.

Not only do you want to attract tenants to fill your spaces, but you want to retain those tenants for the long-term.

There are many ways quality landscaping can help you do this. In fact, there is a direct correlation between nice landscaping and high building occupancy rates.

People love to brag about where they work, especially if it is associated with a beautiful landscape. As a result, it is more economically feasible to invest money in landscaping because the return in the number of tenants and amount of rent money far exceeds the cost of installing ornamental plants.

Here are the top five ways to get tenants to renew their lease with commercial landscaping.

We’ve talked about the benefits of trees and how they add so much value and so many benefits to a commercial property. Trees are a definite boon to any Atlanta commercial landscape.

But trees can also be excellent screens when it comes to beautifying the less-than-beautiful areas of a typical commercial property. We’re talking about dumpster locations, utility or loading areas, roadways or highways, and neighboring properties that aren’t too attractive.

In addition to bringing aesthetics to a less-than-pleasing view, a privacy screen can help block wind and save on energy costs, as well as block unwanted noise. Evergreens make some of the best privacy screen trees because they are green all year long.

Here are our selections for the best evergreen trees for an outdoor privacy screen on your commercial property.

Parking lots are necessary additions to most commercial properties. They give their employees, tenants and visitors safe places to park while they conduct their business at the site.

But these essential urban features can be unsightly in their most basic forms. And municipal ordinances sometimes mandate specific parking amounts for different types of commercial properties, not to mention the landscaping that should accompany them.